Thicker Than Blood
by tenamorette
Summary: Once Benny gets topside he goes after his hybrid daughter, Nicolette. He didn't know he'd need Dean's help, but he did. Then he went to Purgatory to save Sam and now Dean is stuck with Benny's half vamp, half human kid. What is he to do?
1. Chapter 1

**OKAY! I know... I shouldn't start a new story until I finish the last one. This one's been batting around in my head for a while and I hit a wall writing the other one. I will still be working on my "Little Dove" story, but it'll be interspersed with this one. Review, Review, review.**

He had one thing on his mind since escaping from that dark, yet pure place. And the second his new found "brother" pulled his soul out of that literally God forsaken place, they embraced and he headed straight for her.

"Stay out of trouble," Dean said gruffly as they hugged briefly. Then they went their separate ways. He knew Dean was heading for his brother. 'Sammy' was all he could talk about in their snippets of free time while they weren't killing the creatures that were coming after them in Purgatory. And Benny equally helped pass the time as they were watching each others' back talking about his little Nicky.

Nicolette LaFitte was his daughter and he wasn't even sure she was still alive. Half vampire, half human, she should have never even been able to have been created. But she was and she was his beautiful baby girl. He and the love of his life, Andrea, a human who knew what he was and loved him anyway had spent several years raising her. She aged much more slowly because of her genes so the terrible twos had actually lasted 5 years. Even with that, he cherished thw little one completely. She and her mother had been the reason he'd discovered a sense of humanity- the reason he'd given up killing and draining humans. And the reason for his demise. His maker had balked at his chosen lifestyle and the fact that Benny had chosen a human over the man he had looked to as a god. His last memory was of his maker taking his toddler girl away saying he'd raise the little miracle correctly before ripping Andrea's throat and announcing that he was going to bleed her dry.

He grieved for the woman he loved, but he'd be damned if he would let the Old Man raise his precious little girl.

No matter how close Dean and Benny had grown while putting complete trust in each other and keeping each other alive while down there, they both shared each others' passion for family, and they were going to find out what happened to them: Dean,his brother, Benny, his daughter. And that's why, when Dean cut open his arm in a small cemetary in Louisiana, they both knew what that they were due to part.

And now that's why Benny felt guilty for calling Dean so soon after that day, so soon after he was reunited with his brother. But Benny was in a bad way and he had no other friends in the world. He'd gone searching for the Old Man, ambushing an old crony named Quentin to find out where his old boss was staying nowadays. But Quentin had a surprise for him- two other vamps.

Benny had honed his power and fighting skills in the 50 years he spent in Purgatory and he'd been able to take them out. Not without sustaining heavy injuries, however. He was lying on a dock bleeding heavily when he pulled out his cell phone and dialed the only number in his phone.

Dean saw the number on his phone and pulled it out furtively, stepping out of the motel room and out of earshot of his brother. "Benny?" he asked, confused, casting a glance back on the room door as if Sam could hear what he said.

"Hey, Dean. You, um – you got a minute? Afraid I messed up, buddy..." Benny said, his voice strained.

Dean's face went hard as he asked what happened. Benny assured him that it wasn't what he thought, that Benny hadn't slipped up and ate a human. He started to describe what had happened.

"I'm sorry. You took on how many? Are you crazy?" Dean asked, incredulous.

"See, the thing is, my legs – they ain't working so good. There's, uh... a fuel barge not too far from here. I'm pretty sure I can make it at a slow crawl. I was kind of hoping maybe I could ask you for one more favor?" Benny said haltingly, between coughs knowing what the answer would be.

* * *

Benny came out of the bathroom of the fuel barge freshly washed with clean clothes on, drying his hair with a towel. Dean looked at him, surprised, and remarked on how well he looked in spite of the state that he found him with. "Dude, you were double hamstrung," Dean led.

Benny half smiled and drawled out in his Cajun accent, "Yeah, well, a little rest, a half a cooler full of AB-negative – most wounds short of an amputation will mend up... vampirically speaking. I'll be 100% soon enough."

Dean knew him well enough to know when he wasn't telling him something. "Dude, what's going on?" he asked. "Where's your kid?"

Benny put the cap he loved so much and wore every day in Purgatory on his head and looked at his friend who had just saved his ass. He knew from the way he interacted on the phone that the man's brother didn't have a clue who Benny was and that was how Dean preferred it. He deduced that either Dean had lied to his sibling about why he was in Louisiana or that he had told him nothing. Either way, Benny didn't think it was a good idea for the man to get involved any deeper than he already was.

"Your work here is done, Dean," he said succinctly. "You already saved the day. You know I got my... uh 'deal'... and you got your..." he trailed off. "What do you call it?" he struggled. "Family business."

Dean thought back to all the times Benny had saved his ass in Purgatory and vice versa. They spent over a year together and the man hadn't let him down once. Which was more that he could say for his own blood brother, currently. He met Benny's clearwater blue eyes. "This _is_ family business."

Benny rolled his eyes at the sentimentality of the conversation and set his bag down and began to fill Dean in on the full story. About his history with his maker and how they'd feed at sea on rich yachts that they boarded then buried at sea.

"Vampire pirates? That's what you were? 'Vampirates'?!" Dean asked, his brows raised cynically.

Benny stopped his pacing in the fuel tanker and pursed his lips, considering. "You know, all the years we ran together, I can't believe nobody ever thought of that..."

Dean raised his shoulders in a disbelieving shrug. "What do you mean, that's like... the third thing you say!"

Benny huffed impatiently and continued describing the situation. About what the Maker had done to him and Andrea and how he commandeered his little girl.

"I don't know if she's still alive, but I have to find out. And no matter what, I have to kill him. Before he kills me... again." Benny said, taking off his cap and running a hand through his brown/blonde closely shaven hair.

Dean found a notebook and a few other miscellaneous papers of Quentin's on the table and was leafing through it as Benny continued: "You got a cable bill here. Hmm. Quentin's got the NFL package. Prentiss Island, you hear of it?" he asked, meeting the vamp's gaze again.

Benny closed his eyes and let out a sarcastic chuckle. "Oh yeah."

* * *

Dean and Benny used a small motorboat to approach the place. A nice little mansion on the bayou. The Old Man never spared expenses and was used to living without care of expenses. Benny started reminiscing about heir time in Purgatory and asked Dean if he was having trouble with their reality on Earth. Dean cut him off, uncomfortable with his line of questioning.

They entered the old style plantation on a small island in Louisiana and moved through it stealthily. Benny saw something that caught his eye. In spite of Dean urging him to keep moving and moving on himself, Benny picked up a framed photograph on the mantle.

"No, no, no..." he pleaded in his Cajun accent to no one in particular.

"Benny?" he heard a feminine voice say. He turned as Dean hid behind a wall and stopped in his tracks. There she was, tall and elegant, dark hair pinned away from her olive-skinned face, tumbling down her back, her dark eyes looking at him imploringly. She was the woman in the picture, only flesh and blood –right there in front of him.

"Andrea," he breathed her name.

Then he was knocked to the floor as he was hit from behind. Another man came down the stairs behind Andrea and began hitting him as well—and the love of his life merely watched.

From behind the wall, Dean had heard all of this go down. He rolled his eyes at how easily Benny was disarmed by a pair of pretty eyes.

"Idiot," Dean whispered as he wracked his brain for the next move.


	2. Chapter 2

After they had him tied down and handcuffed to a chair, Sorento decided to come into his field of vision. Benny pierced him with his ice blue eyes, but Sorento was undeterred. "Gonna make me do this all over again, aren't you?" the man asked him. He had been the one to chop of Benny's head the last time and perhaps it was this fact that made him cocky.

"Hello, Sorento," Benny greeted, mockingly cheery. Then he looked to the woman he loved, Andrea, regarding him, her eyes a mask to her emotions. "He turned you," he said simply. She nodded. The news devastated the vampire but he schooled his face.

Meanwhile Dean's phone buzzed, nearly disclosing his hiding spot. He made sure he was in a safe place when he called his brother back. Sam nearly lost his mind when Dean told him he was taking out a vamp's nest.

"Are you an idiot, Dean? You know better than to go into a vamp nest alone!" he yelled. Dean held the phone to his chest for a minute, trying to stifle the volume of Sam's voice. He assured that he wasn't alone, that he had a friend that had been tracking the nest for a while. Sam asked if it was Garth, a ludicrous hunter that had teamed up with Dean when Sam had temporarily quit the 'family business'. Dean assured him that it wasn't, that it was a friend.  
"A friend? Dean, you don't have any – all your friends are dead," Sam said, deadpanned.

Dean didn't have time for this. He interrupted Sam and texted him his coordinates, then set the phone on the mantle as he heard another body stalking towards him. Using the phone as a diversion, Dean came in behind the vampire and chopped it's head off. Dean picked up his cell phone and cursed, seeing that it was destroyed.

Then he listened intently to the woman's voice in the other room, barking an order.

"Sorento, go. Tell the old man it's true," she commanded. When he left Benny looked at her with a measure of surprise and amusement.

"He listens to you?" he drawled out in his Creole accent.

She walked to stand in front of him with slow deliberate steps. "It's been a long time," she purred haughtily. "Our father has come to trust my judgment over Sorento's. I answer only to him." 

His eyes flashed at that. "Well, sleeping with God has got to have some perks."

Andrea's hand shot out, quick as a flash and slapped him across his face. Dean winced from behind the wall. Benny merely turned back and looked at her, disappointment wrought on his face.

"Yes, it does," she said simply, her eyes full of mirth. She turned to the two vampires that stood behind her. "Make sure the old man has everything he needs," she ordered and they hurried to obey. She turned to make sure they were gone before she roughly pulled Benny's body forward, gently stroked his and face and kissed him passionately. Her face softened.

"Oh, Benny. When I heard you were back – I don't know – somehow, I knew it was true. I had to believe it, to hope..." she trailed off, continuing to stroke the grizzly sandpaper of his unshaven face. Benny asked what had happened, that the old man had said that he was gonna bleed her dry and Andrea explained that he changed his mind and turned her instead. Benny cursed himself.

"No. It's not your fault. You never hid anything from me, Benny. I chose you," she assured.

Benny got a hurt look on his face. "But why'd you stay... with them, with _him?_ Why?"

"You remember what it's like at first. First, everything resets. Life is blood. That's all. And whoever gives it to you –-," she stated and Benny interrupted her.

"Where's Nicky?" he asked. She licked her lips and looked guiltily at her feet.

"With him. It's complicated..." she trailed off.

"I know. It's complicated. Every damn thing is complicated," he said in frustration. Andrea reached for her waistband where a very large folding knife was hiding. She held it out to Benny.

"It doesn't have to be," she said. He looked up into her rich hazel eyes and realized her intent and started to protest. "Benny, I can't kill him..." she tucked the knife into his jacket, "...none of us can. But you – you came back from the grave. You're proof that he's not all-powerful, that he's not God. He's scared of you, Benny – I know it," she breathed, never taking her eyes off his. She pressed the handcuff key into his hands.

Benny paused, considering. Then he said, carefully, "You understand that I came back to burn his operation to the ground, to stop the killing." They heard a door open.

"Do what you came for, and we can be together," she said wistfully, stroking his face briefly and then stepping away just as Sorento stepped into the room. He stood there, trying very hard to be imposing, his dark eyes staring hard at Benny.

"He wants Benny brought to him."

Meanwhile, as Dean prepared to move the body of the first vampire he had killed, another one turned the hall and focused it's eyes on him. Dean rolled his eyes and muttered a curse, then positioned himself to do battle once again.

Sorento roughly brought a still handcuffed Benny into a room where a man was waiting with his back turned toward them. He turned to face him and ice blue eyes and young boyishly handsome face relaxed in greeting.

Benny's eyes squinted as he regarded him. "Hello, father," he said without warmth.

The maker held out his arms, clad in a light brown high collared preppy cardigan. "Benny. I have no words."

Benny smiled wryly. "Now, I know that ain't true."

"Can you help us understand?" the Maker asked beseechingly. "I know you don't owe us anything, but how? How are you here, standing in front of me?" Benny told him that he found a way back. The old man asked if it was from Hell. Benny explained that it wasn't Hell, but right next door. The Maker asked what he meant.

Benny's eyes went steely, his voice hard. "Oh, I think I'll just have to show you."

Benny's maker settled an amused look at him. "I know it won't change anything, but I regretted having you killed. When it was all done, I wailed when I saw you in all those pieces. Didn't I, Sorento?" The darker man held up a large knife. "Didn't I wail like the ugliest baby in the world?"

"Yes, father," Sorento answered. "That's when you decided to turn his cow," he spat. 

"Poor So-So is bitter because your "cow" outranks him now," he said haughtily.

Benny chose to ignore the insult the man who killed him spoke about the woman he loved and never took his eyes off his maker. "Why didn't you let her die? She meant nothing to you."

"But she meant everything to you," he answered succinctly. "If that's all I could salvage from my wayward son – the woman he defied his maker for – I wanted someone to remember you by."

"And my little girl?"

"Ah yes..." he said smugly and then summoned her by her full name. A side door opened and there she was. His little girl. He held his breath. It had been over 50 years but she didn't look a day over 12. She looked almost exactly like her mother, with long dark curly hair, straight thin nose, full pouty lips. The only thing she inherited from him was his icy blue eyes. They were wide as she stared at him, but went to the Maker's side.

"Father, who is this? I feel as though I know him from somewhere," she said, reaching the old man's side. Benny narrowed his eyes.

"Why, Nicolette, you know him because he is the man who sired you," the old man said in a sing-song voice.

The child's brow furrowed as if remembering something from long ago. Then finally, her face showed the click of a light bulb turning on.

"Daddy?"


End file.
